


Feel the rest out

by aphrodite_mine



Category: Fingersmith - Sarah Waters
Genre: Canon Lesbian Relationship, F/F, Mental Instability, Pornographers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-10-15
Updated: 2014-10-15
Packaged: 2018-02-21 06:18:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,000
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2457950
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aphrodite_mine/pseuds/aphrodite_mine
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A kind of epilogue to the novel.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Feel the rest out

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Sumi](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sumi/gifts).



> Thanks to majesdane for the beta.

Maud lifts my hand, brushes the knuckle of my thumb with the pad of hers. My hands are red and used up, hers fresh and ink stained. I think she'll leave behind a blackish trail but there is no sign. I remember this, but then, no. I remember this like sand sifting through stones. My head is heavy with the scent of ink. "I am writing about us," Maud says and I don't understand. I shouldn't understand. I do understand, my body stiffening, melting. She still touches my fingers, moving lazily. She watches my eyes and recognizes them as belonging to her and to me all at once. I wonder what her eyes might have seen, from under Mrs. Sucksby's arm. I wonder if my own eyes might be different having been brought up in the dim light of this library.

"Read to me?" I say, my voice still seeming that of a stranger. It is a wonder that Maud knows me even now. I shift on the dirty floor, turning to trace lines of her script on the page. She will teach me, perhaps, me feeling the fool and she the patient teacher, lifting my chin with her stained fingers and smiling when I pronounce a word. I think of us as children, her hands already bound up with kid leather, mine calloused and nimble. Were we so interchangeable then that we might have been one another? 

Maud ducks before my eyes catching them again. "It is a lot, Sue." I did not know she could pink after leaving me at those gates. I wondered if she still knew shame. I look at her and feel parts of myself warm that were asleep, I look at her and feel myself waking up, and I blush too. Not for shame, but for wanting her. 

"We have time," I say quietly, still struck by the power of this room, though it is much changed.

She nods, her head bowed. "We do, then. And we might start slower." Even when she turns to me, I cannot read her face. Her eyes are urgent, begging me to understand something… I remember, I do not know her. I am tired. I feel as though I have journeyed a thousand years to arrive here, at her side. "I want…" she says, hesitates. "To show you, rather than read from a book. I've been reading from books all my life, Sue, and never once had the real thing."

"But Mr. Rivers--"

Rivers. Rivers. The name tastes like poison. I see him again, bleeding on Mrs. Sucksby's floor, his cheek sallow. I see his hand on Maud's, rough to bruising. I am glad he's dead. I would see him dead, again, for what he's done. For his part. 

(I want to be the one to bruise her.)

"Rivers was nothing to me, as he was to you. A self-seeking brigand. A liar."

"We were liars, too." I don't know why I say it. I cannot look at her as I do. "I would have sent you there." She must know it, must know that for all her treachery, mine was at equal measure. She must know that I cursed her, that I shouted her name within those walls, hearing nothing echo back but my own misery.

"And I did send you there. I do not think it will benefit us to bargain for guilt, Sue," she says my name and I feel like myself again, whoever that is. I squeeze her hand, for we've been holding one another this whole time. "It's done." She means more than Rivers, more than the asylum. "We can only continue forward, can't we?"

I do not think Maud expects an answer but I find myself nodding. Moving backward has only made me dizzy and sick. I squeeze harder. "Where do we begin?" The tightness in my chest begins to unravel, to spin out, loosening like corset strings. I am almost light headed with possibility, with freedom. 

"We have already started," Maud says, leaning close again, breathing the air from my mouth through hers. Her lips brush mine and I sigh, ready to dissolve into her at the hint of a command. My lips are timid. My hands are clumsy and forgetful. They have slept for months, numb at the tips. They know the way, but badly, under the hem of Maud's skirts, hiking the fabric up and around her waist. "Sue," she says, touching my wrist and making me shudder. I want her. She is pink again, warmth creeping up her cheeks. "I would like to show you, how I've wanted you. To… please you, this time."

A wonder, that the words unsettle her. 

"Here," she says, tugging my hand from between her legs and leaning me backwards onto the floor. 

I've known myself, known Maud, but never known _this_. And knowing now, learning now what that knowing means, I know that the world and all it bears is truly endless. That sunrise truly is a beginning and an ending and a sort of promise. Maud moves her fingers in slow question marks, moving where they are invited by wet, by slick. 

"Oh," I say, shifting forward, shifting more of Maud inside, full, against me. "Show me."

"I will perform every line, Sue," she answers, breathless. I thought my breath the only one gone. "You'll know each word of every verse of how I've longed for you." 

Our lips crash, the little library all full of dust eddies and keening breaths ( _my_ keening breaths) and the sound of fabric on itself. Beneath that, the unmistakable tear of parchment. "Your work!" I cannot help crying, pulling away even as I long for nothing but to swallow Maud whole. I cry for more, push myself to her, and she answers.

"Do you feel it?" Maud whispers, her breath hot on my ear.

Her lips are stained with ink, crushing mine, again, again. "I feel everything." I can feel daylight, soaking through my bones.


End file.
